JasonKimball.org » United Kingdom

Cotswold Wildlife Park

Jay — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 14:08:50 +0000

My mom is here visiting for the next three weeks so we have been looking for fun things to do around the area. Brittany and I have always heard people mention the Cotswold Wildlife Park, so we decided to finally give it a try. To be honest, I was expecting to go and be completely disappointed. I figured that we would drive the 1 1/2 hours and they would have some birds and common farm animals for our son to pet. However, I was surprised to find that the Cotswold Wildlife Park was actually a nice place to check out many different types of animals to include giraffes, rhinos, monkeys, and penguins to name just a few.

I can now say that I actually had a really great time and would highly recommend this wildlife park to others that were looking for a fun day out. Not only did Cotswold Wildlife Park offer some great views, I thought their facilities were top notch and very well maintained. Sometimes you visit wildlife parks and get a sense that the animals are not being taken care of 100%. This is definitely not the case at Cotswold Wildlife Park.

As I mentioned earlier, I would highly recommend this park for anyone looking to have a fun and adventurous day out in the Cotswolds.

As usual, here are some of the pictures I took:

[Show as slideshow]

Visiting York

Jay — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 17:12:02 +0000

This weekend we decided to travel north to visit the city of York for the Jorvik viking festival. Once we arrived we grab something to eat at a local pub and sparked a conversation with the owner about the viking festival. Apparently, the Jorvik Viking website listed the days we planned for the trip as the start of the festival but they must have been changed because the pub owner made some calls and it was planned to start the day after we were going to leave. We walked around the city and did not see too much to do with vikings so we checked out the other popular sites.

The weather was pretty cold and rainy so I would say that we did not enjoy York as much as we originally planned. The highlight of the trip was seeing the amazingly beautiful York Minster.

Here are the pictures from the trip.

[Show as slideshow]

Pumpkin Carving 2010

Jay — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 20:46:36 +0000

This is going to be Connors first Halloween so we decided to pick up three pumpkins and have stage a little pumpkin carving competition at the house. Connor was so holding on to the sharp knife so we let him paint his pumpkin…haha. I think Connor didn’t quite get the purpose of the paint at first so he decided that he would just eat it instead. Eventually he figured things out and went crazy on his pumpkin for about ten minutes straight. As you might have guessed, he was covered in paint by the end of the experience.

I had plans to combine a couple of designs on one pumpkin but I got tired and decided to have a glass of scotch instead. Now if I could only get my hands on some good pumpkin ale.

Enough about beer, here are some of the pictures from our fun night.

[Show as slideshow]

Ferrari Driving Experience at Silverstone Circuit

Jay — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 18:15:55 +0000

My wife bought me a Ferrari driving experience from Silverstone.co.uk for my birthday and I finally got around to using it. I must say that it was a lot of fun. The day started off with a 20 minute instruction followed by 3 or 4 laps around the Silverstone circuit in a Ferrari 360 Modena. It was about £99 online for the experience and I must say that it was worth every penny.

I would have been fine just backing the Ferrari in and out of a driveway but instead I got to drive a couple laps around the circuit. You are accompanied the entire time with an instructor that tells you when to shift and when to brake. More importantly, he tells you when to mash the pedal! I must admit that I was a little worried so I didn’t drive it as hard as I could have by any means. It was more like a leisurely drive, haha.

After the experience was finished all I could think of was how I just started to get familiar with the circuit and wanted to drive more. I can’t wait to do this again in the near future.

They have a couple options for you after you finish up. You can get a picture of you driving on the circuit for £20, in-car filming for £35, and hot rides with professional drivers for £30.

I got the in-car filming and you can check it out below. I was a little worried so the speed isn’t exactly “Ferrari fast”. I plan on speeding things up next time when I drive the Audi R8.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Rocking Out On A Rascal

Jay — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 19:58:23 +0000

Everyone wants to be a Rock Star!

Brill Windmill Revisited

Jay — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 12:51:32 +0000

I had some free time and decided to revisit the beautiful Brill Windmill which I had originally photographed back in September. Here are some of the photos from my more recent trip.